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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22357318">The Little Robot</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassieoh/pseuds/cassieoh'>cassieoh</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Curiosity, Gen, Mars Exploration Rovers, Space Exploration, Spirit - Freeform, rovers and the humans who love them</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 09:15:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,218</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22357318</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassieoh/pseuds/cassieoh</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The little robot had no concept of history. She had never heard of her oldest ancestor, Sputnik, who traveled further than any of her kind ever had at the time. She had no way of knowing that when she touched down on Kepler-90f she had became the furthest traveled of her kind. She did not know that she was the first to travel by hyper-jump, harnessing the power of the bonds between living cells to tear a hole in space-time and transport the little robot nearly 2545 light-years to a new world in only three hundred years. She did not know how people on her homeworld had gathered around their holoprojectors to receive her first transmission, how they had told stories of the positively archaic technology she was using. She had no idea about the new types of rovers and probes and landers that had been invented in the three hundred years she traveled in silence.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Little Robot</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wayfarer emerged from hyperspace exactly where it was meant to. It fired up its thrusters for a few moments, gaining momentum to approach the large, rocky planet silhouetted by Kepler-90. Its approach was carefully calculated to result in a geosynchronous orbit over the most likely favorable landing sites. Wayfarer spent nearly a week in orbit imaging the ground below and running comparison calculations before making a decision and initiating the lander’s separation for descent.</p><p>Descent from weightless orbit to the hard rock of a new world took only 131 seconds of controlled entry. The little robot inside the lander suddenly experienced pressure many times her own mass pressing her up and away from the safety measures built into her harness. Bright orange and then blue and then white flames licked at the outside of the lander as it rattled and shook its way towards the surface.</p><p>Her lander thudded to the ground with a great wave of dust and the little robot awoke on Kepler-90f. While the little robot ran though the diagnostics she was programed to complete upon power-up, the lander gathered readings of conditions, ensuring that radiation from the star, so like that of her home, would not harm her. Then, assured of her safety, the lander’s hatch opened forward into a shallow ramp.</p><p>The little robot rocked back and forth in the safety clasps she had spent the last few centuries cradled by, and started down the ramp. Her wheels, carefully designed and tested for any condition they might encounter, sank just a little into the thin layer of dust that coated the area Wayfarer chose for her. The treads found purchase on the wind-smoothed rock below the dust and she started forward.</p><p>She would not know it for many years yet, but she was the first being to ever touch the surface of the rocky planet. Instead of marveling at the view, at the deep plum colored dust or the permanently pink-red sky or the sharp ridge of a distant crater, she extended her sampling arm and scooped a small amount of the dust into the little collection chamber on her chassis. Over the next hour, as she slowly trundled away from her lander and her last physical connection to the planet of her origin, the little robot’s analytic systems would separate the dust into its component parts, transmitting the data back first to the lander and then to the ship that had carried her to Kepler-90, now a permanent satellite. The Wayfarer would wait for the perfect moment, when the stars were quite literally aligned, to send the data back to their home-world. These data bursts could only happen during a narrow window that began every 124.9 days, so Wayfarer collected a great deal of data from the little robot before calling home.</p><p>The little robot did not know about any of that though. She spent her days traveling further and further away from the safety of the lander. She would pause to scoop up dust or when there was a rock in her path. Once every kilometer she stopped and drove her small drill into the rock, taking a sample from nearly a meter below the surface. These samples were the most exciting because they were rarer. She found tiny diamonds in the rock, evidence of extreme geological events in the past, little pieces of the story of Kepler-90f being told for the first time in history.</p><p>Some days she couldn’t move because the thin atmosphere roiled with winds that whipped the fine dust into the air, obscuring her stellar panels. She didn’t know it, but she was the last of the robots her creators would ever build who would be reliant on energy from a star to operate. Those who came after her would never have to worry about dust or traveling too far under a ridge. They would be powered by the splitting of atoms and the ambient radiation of the vast universe.</p><p>On days when the sky halted her work, the little robot was left alone with her thoughts.</p><p>The little robot did not have thoughts in the same way as her creators might. She was not a native speaker of any language and she did not have the ability to truly comprehend what linguistic utterances meant. Her data and her tasks were all conveyed to her in a special dialect; binary commands overlaid by human words, a halfway solution negotiated long before her first component was machined. But, her creators were not privy to all her inner workings. She did not have sapience in the traditional sense or thoughts that her creators would recognize. What she had was a little line of code all her own, where she made notes as she worked.</p><p>These notations were mostly functional;</p><p>
  <em>Wind speed increased by 2 knots. Compensate appropriately.</em>
</p><p><em>Kepler-90 will set at approximately 18:09, power conservation to begin at 18:05</em>.</p><p>But, the little robot also had thoughts that her creators might have been surprised by;</p><p>
  <em>That’s a cool rock.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I bet they’ll like that one.</em>
</p><p>The little robot had no concept of history. She had never heard of her oldest ancestor, Sputnik, who traveled further than any of her kind ever had at the time. She had no way of knowing that when she touched down on Kepler-90f she had became the furthest traveled of her kind. She did not know that she was the first to travel by hyper-jump, harnessing the power of the bonds between living cells to tear a hole in space-time and transport the little robot nearly 2545 light-years to a new world in only three hundred years. She did not know how people on her homeworld had gathered around their holoprojectors to receive her first transmission, how they had told stories of the positively archaic technology she was using. She had no idea about the new types of rovers and probes and landers that had been invented in the three hundred years she traveled in silence.</p><p>She had no concept of those who had come before, but she did know her task, her over-riding purpose; find new things, send data about those things home. She could not feel pleasure, but there was a deep satisfaction each time she had the opportunity to analyze something new.</p><p><em>That’s a cool rock, </em>she’d think<em>, I bet they’ll like this one.</em></p><p>The little robot did not know the history of her kind. She did not know how very many had perished, crushed upon landing, lost to the depths of space, burned up on entry, boiled away in hostile environments, decommissioned by uncaring politics. She did not know to fear the dust as it built on the horizon or the winds as they picked up speed past any she had encountered before.</p><p>She did not know that in less than ten rotations of Kepler-90f she would find herself stranded, her stellar panels irrevocably caked in dust.</p><p>The little robot did not know that in two Earth-years the many-times descendants of her creators would bow their heads in a moment of silence for the little robot who flew so far and died so alone.</p><p>The little robot did not know any of that.</p><p>All she knew was;</p><p>
  <em>Oh! That’s a cool rock.</em>
</p><p> </p><p><br/>
<em>I bet they’ll like that one.</em>
</p>
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